Part 4
Evan moved both horses back to Ruth’s and began taking turns with her watching the road. Maggie and Travis came out when they could, bringing supplies and staying late enough for Ruth to get some sleep. Nobody called it protection, but Evan stopped asking why they had driven so far with a single sack of feed.
The weeks warmed. The ground dried, and the grass along the wooded edge of Ruth’s place lost its spring green. Evan checked the approaches before bed, fed the filly, and began to think a public refusal might have been enough.
He woke to smoke. From the yard he could see separate stretches of flame along the trees, disconnected orange patches on a night without lightning. The level stock path beside the grove was burning; above the yard, the road remained clear, but he couldn’t get the filly up that cutbank.
Ruth was on the porch pulling on her boots. Evan shouted for her to get clear of the house and ran for the barn, where Atlas was moving hard against the door. The filly had pressed herself into a corner.
He opened both doors and caught her lead. Atlas came out beside him, ears flat, and stopped so suddenly Evan almost walked into his shoulder.
Dale Rusk stood between them and the open yard. Three men were with him, carrying rifles, their faces lit from below by the burning brush.
“Leave the big one,” Dale said.
Evan stepped in front of the filly. “You set this?”
“Wade wants the place cleared. You’ve had your chances.”
Beyond the men, fire crawled through the dry grass toward the barn. Evan could see Ruth near the porch, unable to reach them without crossing the space Dale controlled.
“There are houses down this ridge.”
“Then quit standing there.” Dale lifted his rifle as Atlas reared behind Evan. One of the other men stumbled back, and Dale snapped at him to shoot if he had to, but keep away from the legs.
A shot struck the dirt near Dale’s boots. He turned toward a truck on the road above the yard, where Maggie stood beside the open door with a rifle in her hands.
“Set them down,” she said. “I called this in before we came through the gate.”
Travis got out on the other side. They had been coming to relieve Ruth and had seen the glow above the trees from the road. While Maggie covered Dale from above, Travis scrambled down the bank into the yard, holding his shotgun low.
“You’re setting fires above my place too,” he said. “Think about that.”
Dale’s men began looking toward their own way out. In the moment their attention shifted, Atlas lunged past Evan toward the strip of ground between the barn and the trees.
A tangle of fallen branches lay burning across the stock path. Atlas struck through the low flames, stamping and shoving at the branches until one end shifted. Evan shouted his name, but the horse kept forcing against the obstruction, opening a space beside his shoulder.
Dale backed away. Then all four men were scrambling up the bare bank toward the road, abandoning the demand that had brought them there. Maggie called for Evan to bring the filly while Travis reached Ruth and helped her across the yard toward Atlas.
Travis guided Ruth through the gap to the meadow. Evan followed with the filly, but she planted her feet at the heat, and he had to speak close to her ear until she took a step. Atlas was still moving against the burning branches when they squeezed through beside him.
Evan stumbled onto open ground with the filly. He turned, expecting the enormous red head above his shoulder, but smoke covered the gap. Flame swept along the limbs Atlas had displaced, and Evan could no longer see a way back through.
He handed off the lead and ran toward the heat. Travis caught him around the chest and dragged him back while he fought to get loose.
“You can’t get through,” Travis kept saying. “Evan, listen to me.”
The volunteer engines reached them almost an hour later. By then the barn was lost, and fire had taken much of the adjoining grove. Evan stood with the filly against his side while the crews worked to keep it from Ruth’s house, looking at every shape that moved beyond their lights.
At dawn, when they allowed him into the burned ground, he found Atlas lying inside the grove. The great chest lifted shallowly, paused, then lifted again. Evan went down beside his head and put his hand against the familiar scar.
One eye opened. Atlas moved his muzzle toward Evan’s shoulder, barely touching it before his head settled back to the ground.
“I’m here,” Evan said. He couldn’t manage anything else until Claire arrived.
She knelt beside the horse, listened, examined the burns, and began treating him with the supplies she had brought. When Evan asked about moving him, she looked at the size of him and the effort each breath required.
“Not safely right now. We’ll do what we can here.”
She had them bring clean bedding and water to the cleared ground around him. Later, with help, they shifted him away from the worst ash, but he could not get up. Evan stayed beside him while Claire worked, learning to move when asked and sit still when there was nothing for his hands to do.
For two days people came with things they thought might help. Maggie brought supplies, Nora joined the work of clearing debris, and Ruth kept finding a place for each person who arrived. Kessler sent no one.
On the third night, Claire stayed. Atlas’s breathing had grown harder despite treatment, and she told Evan plainly that the injury inside his lungs was worsening. She would keep relieving what she could; if she couldn’t keep him comfortable, they would have to help him die.
Evan nodded, then moved closer to Atlas’s head. He wanted the horse to be able to smell him without having to lift it.
The filly called from the temporary pen, and an ear turned toward the sound. Evan rubbed the unburned patch beneath Atlas’s jaw, the place he had found during their evenings behind the cabin.
“She’s right there,” he said. “Ruth’s with her.”
He rested his forehead against the horse’s neck and stayed through the long spaces between breaths. Near dawn, he whispered that Atlas could stop now, that he would look after the little one.
The next breath did not come. Claire put her hand on Evan’s back, but he kept his own hand beneath the horse’s jaw until the morning light reached them.
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